Having a Bad Day?: Get 'yer Hugs here!!

[Briar King]

I'd wait. Maybe not the full 30 days but atleast 2 1/2 weeks. I'm no vet though

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

2 minutes ago, Briar King said:

I'd wait. Maybe not the full 30 days but atleast 2 1/2 weeks. I'm no vet though

That's what I'd figured—I've read stories of people making their dogs sick with too many flea treatments at once, and I didn't want to do that with Bruce. Although, it's been two weeks already—I gave him his last treatment on the first of the month—so not sure if that makes a difference. 

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

@Quiver, I seriously think it's time you found a new job. I mean, you deserve a much better job. I know people around my age that earn more than you I'm afraid. Your hours are horrid, they aren't very considerate, and now it appears your getting shortchanged. 

[Aonar he/him]

Okay. Spoilered below is an incoherent rant roughly 3.5 months in the making. It's long. Don't feel obligated to read it. I'm mostly writing it because writing these things out seems to help me deal with them. Please forgive the typos, it was written largely on mobile.

 

Okay. So. I know this I the bad day thread, but I'm going to make it the bad 2 ish months thread for a little while, if that's alright.

So, let's start at the beginning, I guess. This summer, I finally got a job. (Couldn't before, since I couldn't drive on my own, and my mother has Addison's Disease, and frequently isn't up to driving into town each day.) Yay me, right? Well, not exactly. First month and a half, roughly, it was okay. I had more of my own spending money, and while work wasn't great (It was retail at a department store, and the organization for warehouse in my section was abysmally bad.) it was tolerable. (This is roughly the same time I had my confused rant in the relationships thread. Not important now, will come back later.)

So, summer goes about as well as it can, although working full time (44 hours a week; even though I think they're technically supposed to pay overtime past 40 they dont) I had no time to do anything. (And my sister and her two kids were here over the summer, so it was even harder to do things. I like her and my niece and nephew, but there's a fair bit of tension between her and my mum, which made time spent at home awkward, and two kids under 4 are always a handful, regardless of how nice they are. :P)

So while the summer wasn't terrible, in some ways it felt like I didn't have one. Then the school year starts, and things start piling up.

When I was hired, I told my employer up front that I might not be able to continue working through the school year, and they told me that so long as I worked a shift every couple weeks, that would be fine. I wasn't quite sure how they were going to fulfill that promise (they're horribly understaffed; the new management that came in shortly before I started working rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, so most of their old staff quit, and a lot of what remains is unhappy) but I took them at their word, and figured that would be manageable.

However, right as school starts, the service manager at the store quits. This forcibly promotes my original supervisor (the one who told me it was fine if I only worked every couple weeks) to his position, leaving us even further understaffed. So he tells me he has to schedule me for more shifts (3 per week, from the the 1-0.5 we'd talked about) in order to keep things running while they found new employees and trained my new supervisor. Okay, whatever. I was fine with doing that until they got things sorted out. Then, a couple weeks pass, they still don't have people, and my other activities are starting, karate, volleyball, music, etc, and my workload at school is going up. And I'm still working 20+ hours a week. Then, to top things off, I meet my new supervisor. He's another guy from my department, who I've dealt with before, and dislike. He's OCD about everything, extremely passive-aggressive, and convinced that me and the other part time high school student working there are utterly incompetent. Thankfully at least, he was still in training, so the original guy is still making the schedule, and I can get the time off I need for sports and school.

A couple more more weeks pass, and I'm becoming more and more stressed, I'm not getting enough sleep, my schoolwork is slipping, and I'm missing karate and volleyball all over the place and haven't even started really practicing my music, trying to do everything and not really doing anything.

To top it all of, the girl who broke up with me this summer has been spending more and more time with me, to the point where it kind of feels like we're in a relationship again; however, the last time we discussed things (towards the beginning of the school year) we were still just friends, and I'm too much of a coward to ask for clarification again. (All in all, this is a relatively minor stress, but everything adds up.)

Oh, and my dislike of my new supervisor is mutual.

So fast forward to the first week of October. I'm still working more than I'd like to, I've talked the guy who used to be my supervisor and is still making my schedule into giving me time off for volleyball tournaments, and bargained down to two shifts a week. It's better, but still not enough, especially given that I generally end up working 3 shifts anyways to cover for people who are sick or away.

Oh, and in the space of two weeks, I manage to get into two (minor, thank goodness, although they could have been much worse) car accidents, where in my almost two years of driving prior, I've never had one. So that helps.

And now we come to this week. The old supervisor is seriously sick, so the new one has taken over the scheduling. (I was not aware of this.) So two weekends that I had booked off for volleyball I ended up being booked for. Come 5PM yesterday, I missed a call from the new supervisor  (I was playing volleyball and I did not have my phone). Then I got an angry call from the head manager, asking me where I was and why I wasn't at work. When I explained that I wasn't supposed to be scheduled, I was informed that I wouldn't always get time off that I asked for, and I needed to direct scheduling questions to the new supervisor, even though up till now, he wasn't the one doing them. He told me that I had to come in as soon as possible, or not come in at all, and I couldn't expect to keep working there if I couldn't be counted on as a reliable worker (This is the first time anything like this has happened, and it wasn't my fault). I was pissed, but not sure what to do, so I told him I'd come in, got my parents to drive my stuff into town, (I live about 45 mins out) and left halfway through our last game of the day.

So after thinking things over at work, I come to a decision. Storm this. I'd been thinking about quitting prior to this, for reasons that should be obvious from the above, and even if those were worked out, I had no plans of staying with the job for another summer. (It wouldn't be that hard to find something that paid better and had better hours.) 

I wrote a note to my supervisor and the head manager, saying that I would not be in this weekend or next, and as soon as I got home, wrote up a letter of resignation which I emailed to them. 

So now I work my last shift tomorrow, and am utterly free afterwards. Which is so nice. In some ways, I wonder why I didn't do this before, given how much relief I'm feeling. However, at the same time, I get new things to worry about, now. I need roughly 12000 dollars saved for next year, to pay for school (and this is assuming I get at least a few scholarships), and now I no longer have a source of income over the school year. The shift tomorrow is also probably going to suck, seeing how I'm no longer exactly on good terms with most of the management.  

But, c'est la vie. I'm not sure this was the best thing to do, but I'm very frustrated, and don't really feel like I had any better options. Hopefully now I'll be able to get caught up again on the things I need to, and roughly get my life back in order.

 

Edited October 16, 2016 by Aonar Faileas

[Sunbird she/her]

@Aonar Faileas I think you made the right decision by quitting. If you can't rely on the supervisors and management to keep their promises or to treat you like an actual human being with a life outside of your job, then I don't think the money is worth the stress of working there. If they keep treating their employees like crem as you've described, they won't be in business for the long-term anyway because they'll drive the good workers away.

[Oversleep]

Nosebleed season! Pretending that I overused my psychic powers is getting old.

Explanation: (cold = heating up the house = dry air) + my nose is always running 'cause allergy. Having a messed up nasal septum probably doesn't help.

For the past week I've been sick and wiping my nose all the time so it probably strained blood vessels and I am bleeding the third time today :/

P.S. Coincidentally, I'm writing an article about Hemalurgy...

Edited October 16, 2016 by Oversleep

[soyperson]

2 hours ago, Oversleep said:

Nosebleed season! Pretending that I overused my psychic powers is getting old.

Explanation: (cold = heating up the house = dry air) + my nose is always running 'cause allergy. Having a messed up nasal septum probably doesn't help.

For the past week I've been sick and wiping my nose all the time so it probably strained blood vessels and I am bleeding the third time today :/

P.S. Coincidentally, I'm writing an article about Hemalurgy...

Sheesh. And I thought I was the bleeder around here.

I apologize. My bad puns just couldn't help themselves. 

But, in all seriousness, to stop nosebleeds. 

You know that weird part of your mouth in front of your gums, where there's almost like a little pocket up there? 

Take a little piece of toilet paper or paper towel, ball it up into a little bitty ball, and just keep it there, on whichever side is bleeding. I know it sounds crazy but trust me. I'm a guy who knows his blood. 

[Kaymyth she/her]

7 hours ago, Oversleep said:

Nosebleed season! Pretending that I overused my psychic powers is getting old.

Explanation: (cold = heating up the house = dry air) + my nose is always running 'cause allergy. Having a messed up nasal septum probably doesn't help.

For the past week I've been sick and wiping my nose all the time so it probably strained blood vessels and I am bleeding the third time today :/

P.S. Coincidentally, I'm writing an article about Hemalurgy...

Humidifiers are your friends!

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

I hate new shoes. Particularly leather school ones. 

Today I wore new leather school shoes.

And now my left foot is now a regiblister. And almost all the skin on the back of my right foot has been rubbed off.

Come on! I don't buy shoes to harm my feet, I buy them to protect my feet! Imma put this in pet peeves as well.

[Delightful]

I am so sick of apartment hunting I literally just don't wanna anymore can somewhere perfect please just fall out of the sky and the keys land in my hands because my brain is so fried and I need somewhere to live in the next fortnight UNIVERSE HELP ME PLEASE.

[Silverblade5 he/him]

I just learned that a friend of mine cuts herself. I've started looking into things I know she enjoys(hiking) so that she'd have a reliable way of being able to enjoy herself. I've also created a gdoc so that she can have a reliable way to talk and vent without texting. Beyond that though, I'm not sure what to do. I've never had someone trust me enough to tell me something like this, and I'm not sure this would be the proper time for sharing.

[soyperson]

1 hour ago, Silverblade5 said:

I just learned that a friend of mine cuts herself. I've started looking into things I know she enjoys(hiking) so that she'd have a reliable way of being able to enjoy herself. I've also created a gdoc so that she can have a reliable way to talk and vent without texting. Beyond that though, I'm not sure what to do. I've never had someone trust me enough to tell me something like this, and I'm not sure this would be the proper time for sharing.

An ex-girlfriend of mine cut herself. She did it out of stress and lack of self-worth and confidence. Just talk to her about it, gently, without being invasive, and if you approach a tender subject, back away and change the subject. 

Do you know why she does it?

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

1 hour ago, Silverblade5 said:

I just learned that a friend of mine cuts herself. I've started looking into things I know she enjoys(hiking) so that she'd have a reliable way of being able to enjoy herself. I've also created a gdoc so that she can have a reliable way to talk and vent without texting. Beyond that though, I'm not sure what to do. I've never had someone trust me enough to tell me something like this, and I'm not sure this would be the proper time for sharing.

If she told you, that's a good sign. It means that 1) like you said, she trusts you and 2) she wants help, even if she may not be ready to seek counseling. Just listen to her. Don't press her for details, or try and get her to talk about it if she doesn't want to at that moment, but if she does, listen. Ask her how she's doing every day, and if she starts to confide her triumphs and failures ("I got upset at my mom and wrote in my journal instead of cutting," "I was clean for two days, but I did it again just now") encourage her triumphs and sympathize with her failures. Being there for her without judging may not sound like much, but it's exactly what she needs. 

[Silverblade5 he/him]

13 minutes ago, TwiLyghtSansSparkles said:

If she told you, that's a good sign. It means that 1) like you said, she trusts you and 2) she wants help, even if she may not be ready to seek counseling. Just listen to her. Don't press her for details, or try and get her to talk about it if she doesn't want to at that moment, but if she does, listen. Ask her how she's doing every day, and if she starts to confide her triumphs and failures ("I got upset at my mom and wrote in my journal instead of cutting," "I was clean for two days, but I did it again just now") encourage her triumphs and sympathize with her failures. Being there for her without judging may not sound like much, but it's exactly what she needs. 

That's why I made the gdoc. Her parents check her texts, and at this point, I don't think them finding out from anyone but her would be helpful.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

12 minutes ago, Silverblade5 said:

That's why I made the gdoc. Her parents check her texts, and at this point, I don't think them finding out from anyone but her would be helpful.

Great Noodly One, they check her texts? Yeah, the Gdoc is a good idea, I think. I really, really hope they don't take the news badly—granted, it would be pretty scary to learn that your child was cutting, but if they overreact (which seems plausible, given how little respect they seem to have for her privacy) then they could easily make it ten times worse. 

[Silverblade5 he/him]

The girl I was talking about, she ended up getting a panic attack on a bus ride to a marching band competition and tried to use texting to stay in control. Any advice on maintaining a text conversation? I can barely maintain one as is.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

2 minutes ago, Silverblade5 said:

The girl I was talking about, she ended up getting a panic attack on a bus ride to a marching band competition and tried to use texting to stay in control. Any advice on maintaining a text conversation? I can barely maintain one as is.

1) DO NOT ANSWER ANYTHING WITH "K." THIS IS AN INSTANT CONVERSATION-KILLER. 

2) Whenever possible, answer a question with a comment, and then a question. Like so: "I'm so scared right now." "It's going to be all right. Why are you scared?" 

3) If you don't know what to say, don't be afraid to say so. "I'm not sure what to say, but I'm here for you" isn't a bad reply at all. It shows that you care about the other person, even if you don't have any advice for their situation. 

4) Don't give advice unless she asks. 

5) If she changes the subject after a while, go with it. 

[Silverblade5 he/him]

1 hour ago, TwiLyghtSansSparkles said:

1) DO NOT ANSWER ANYTHING WITH "K." THIS IS AN INSTANT CONVERSATION-KILLER. 

2) Whenever possible, answer a question with a comment, and then a question. Like so: "I'm so scared right now." "It's going to be all right. Why are you scared?" 

3) If you don't know what to say, don't be afraid to say so. "I'm not sure what to say, but I'm here for you" isn't a bad reply at all. It shows that you care about the other person, even if you don't have any advice for their situation. 

4) Don't give advice unless she asks. 

5) If she changes the subject after a while, go with it. 

Ok.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

2 hours ago, Silverblade5 said:

Ok.

you mean K*

Anyway, perhaps you could find out why? I emphasise as finding the root problem will be a solution unto itself. For example, as Bleeder said, If she's doing it out of lack of self-worth and confidence, then perhaps you can instill that self-worth and confidence. Show her why life needs to be cherished. (Unless your me, then life is a constant annoyance). How old is she btw? If she's in her teens, then this is kinda understandable.

I know a few people who cut. Wait, nvm, their genuinely crazy. And "emo".

[Silverblade5 he/him]

6 hours ago, TwiLyghtSansSparkles said:

Great Noodly One, they check her texts? Yeah, the Gdoc is a good idea, I think. I really, really hope they don't take the news badly—granted, it would be pretty scary to learn that your child was cutting, but if they overreact (which seems plausible, given how little respect they seem to have for her privacy) then they could easily make it ten times worse. 

 

20 minutes ago, Dankness Ascendant said:

you mean K*

Anyway, perhaps you could find out why? I emphasise as finding the root problem will be a solution unto itself. For example, as Bleeder said, If she's doing it out of lack of self-worth and confidence, then perhaps you can instill that self-worth and confidence. Show her why life needs to be cherished. (Unless your me, then life is a constant annoyance). How old is she btw? If she's in her teens, then this is kinda understandable.

I know a few people who cut. Wait, nvm, their genuinely crazy. And "emo".

We just talked, and the reason appears to be a way to deal with fighting parents and a general outpouring of negativity. The cutting is happening in school bathrooms with a paperclip 

Edited October 18, 2016 by Silverblade5

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

13 minutes ago, Silverblade5 said:

 

We just talked, and the reason appears to be a way to deal with fighting parents and a general outpouring of negativity. The cutting is happening in school bathrooms with a paperclip 

Do you have anything similar to Kid's Helpline wherever you are? Those parents need a serious talking to, I doubt they realise what is happening to their child.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

4 hours ago, Silverblade5 said:

We just talked, and the reason appears to be a way to deal with fighting parents and a general outpouring of negativity. The cutting is happening in school bathrooms with a paperclip 

It's not going to be an easy thing to stop. Having her parents stop their fighting would be an enormous help, but there are probably other reasons for the cutting, beyond the surface ones she's able to identify. She'll need to find a new way to cope with her pain and anxiety, plus break the habit of self-injury. All of this is to say, don't become frustrated if you don't see results soon. Cutting is a complex problem, and it takes time and patience to solve. 

[Silverblade5 he/him]

Alright, more details. The cutting is her way of dealing with panic attacks. These normally come from her parents fighting, as a while back, she'd have to stop it from getting physical. Her mom usually starts it while her dad has a short temper. Both try to get her involved, trying to get her to take their side while accusing her of taking the other side.

[Delightful]

7 hours ago, Silverblade5 said:

Alright, more details. The cutting is her way of dealing with panic attacks. These normally come from her parents fighting, as a while back, she'd have to stop it from getting physical. Her mom usually starts it while her dad has a short temper. Both try to get her involved, trying to get her to take their side while accusing her of taking the other side.

That is so incredibly awful.  

[Silverblade5 he/him]

6 hours ago, Delightful said:

That is so incredibly awful.  

The worst part is that last time she was caught, she was told her behavior was unacceptable, and might cause her stepdad to leave. This makes them not finding out a priority for her, and also eliminates counseling as an option in her eyes as that would mean a call to her parents.